While we continue to speak of the numerous issues that our country currently faces, we must remember that climate change remains our single biggest existential threat.
Indeed, our coastal belt, as with many other parts of the country, is no longer bracing for climate change but right in the middle of feeling its devastating effects.
Last year revealed a grim truth, that even without a major cyclone, relentless low-pressure systems, tidal surges, and floods battered embankments, displaced families, and eroded livelihoods. Villages were repeatedly submerged, while salinity crept further inland, poisoning farmland and contaminating scarce drinking water. The human toll too was staggering as shelters overflowed and waterborne diseases surged.
While not immediately visible, such silent disasters such as salinity intrusion, disease outbreaks, and tidal flooding are more often than not as destructive as cyclones, yet rarely command the same urgency in policy or preparedness.
Bangladesh remains among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, with projections of GDP losses up to 6.8% annually by 2050 if adaptation gaps persist. What is happening in our country is no longer an environmental crisis but rather a humanitarian and economic emergency.
While the path forward demands decisive national action that simply cannot be ignored, what must be remembered and spoken of time and time again is that all of the climate suffering we and other nations of the Global South are currently experiencing is a direct result of the industrialized Global North who have, in the pursuit of wealth and prosperity, caused the climate crisis.
As such, while we have to do our bit, nations such as ours cannot shoulder this burden alone - nor should that be the expectation.
The nations of the Global North must recognize their responsibility, not just in terms of cutting their emissions but more importantly, financing mitigation and adaptation in nations such as ours.
Climate justice is not and has never been charity. It is the moral duty and responsibility of those who have caused this crisis to ensure it.
